Anonymity in the blogsphere: possibilities

Most bloguers are somewhat anonymous persons. Even when they give a full profile of themselves (or at least that will be your first impression) most of them are still anonymous, in the sense that their audience is minimum. This assumption seems at first clear as crystal and not open for debate. It is not that simple, though.

The blogsphere, for all its anarchic resonance, is an organized world, where individuals gather around similar interests, likes, dislikes, or have other bonds, such as real life family ties and friendships. Individuals will blog were they think it is good for them to blog. If I am into fast cars I will not join the crochet bloguing community. In a way, the claim that anonymity is the rule in the Blogsphere is refuted by this simple fact: people will blog with people they like, with people with whom they have affinities. They will create bonds with other bloguers (links) and their anonymity will be the lesser the greater are the bonds they create with others.

Nevertheless, anonymity does have its advantages, the main one consisting in the possibility of creating several personas for oneself. By acting in such way you can approach groups you are interested to interact with as if you were an equal, that not being the actual case.

You can lie and get away with it. All you need are some more or less refined linguistic and technical skills, to help sell your fake creation. It also means that you can interact with different people without hurting susceptibilities; groups with whom you share some interests might have different values from others you also share interests with. If you like fast cars and crochet at the same time, having two personas will prove useful. For your fast car persona you probably want a macho type bloguer. For your crochet persona the exact opposite.

Cultivated anonymity helps you interact within one or more given communities in different and interesting ways. Also, if you are conducting research on bloguers behavioral patterns, it will be interesting to see how they react to your different personas. You can even have several personas to interact within the same community.

Nevertheless, before you decide going on yet another anonymous tour, you must remember this is not an easy affair. Anonymity of this kind demands a very skillful use of language. If in real life there is something called fingerprints, in the blogsphere there are linguistic fingerprints. And there is also a more technical side to the issue. Blogs today come with trackers, i.e., devices by which the owner of a blog can track down visitors to their own servers, check the actual time they spent at the blog, entry and exit page, page views and also the precise date, to the minute, of a given visit…